Better Systems. Better Fundraising.

Many nonprofits know where fundraising opportunities exist. The harder part is building the capacity, systems, priorities, and operating practices needed to pursue those opportunities consistently.

The Saltworks Fundraising Lab is an applied research, learning, and capacity-building initiative exploring the gap between fundraising opportunity and fundraising execution.

Through practitioner research, field learning, applied projects, and collaborative inquiry, the Lab examines the organizational conditions that shape fundraising effectiveness and translates those insights into practical tools, assessments, and capacity-building approaches.

What We're Exploring

The Lab is currently focused on several practical questions:

• Why do promising fundraising opportunities stall?
• What organizational capacities are most important for consistent fundraising execution?
• How do staffing, systems, data, leadership, and operating practices affect fundraising performance?
• What fundraising infrastructure provides the greatest leverage for resource-constrained organizations?
• What makes organizations ready to successfully adopt new fundraising strategies, systems, and technologies?
• How can funders and capacity-building partners better support sustainable nonprofit revenue capacity?

Our initial focus is on small and midsize nonprofits, particularly organizations operating with limited dedicated fundraising capacity.

What We're Seeing So Far

Early observations from consulting engagements, practitioner conversations, survey responses, and applied projects suggest that fundraising challenges often extend beyond strategy alone.

Recurring themes include:

1. Limited capacity
   Organizations often recognize opportunities but lack the staff time or expertise needed to pursue them consistently.
2. Fragmented systems
   Prospect information, activities, decisions, and next steps can live across spreadsheets, CRMs, inboxes, and individual staff knowledge.
3. Unclear priorities and ownership
   Teams may have opportunities in front of them without a consistent process for determining what deserves attention, who owns the next move, or when action should occur.
4. Limited visibility
   Leadership and boards may struggle to understand pipeline health, upcoming opportunities, or where fundraising activity is stalled.
5. The implementation gap
   Organizations may know what they should do but lack the operating practices, alignment, or capacity needed to make new systems and strategies stick.

These are preliminary observations, not conclusions. The Lab is continuing to test where these patterns hold, where they differ, and which interventions create meaningful improvement.

The Fundraising Lab is designed to translate learning into practical application. One of its first outputs is a working Fundraising Operating System Toolkit, developed to help nonprofit teams test and strengthen core fundraising management practices.

A practical collection of tools focused on:

• Prospect prioritization
• Pipeline management and visibility
• Prospect review and next-action accountability
• Leadership reporting
• Fundraising portfolio planning
• AI-assisted prospect review and preparation
• Quick-start implementation guidance

The toolkit is currently being tested and refined with nonprofit practitioners. Feedback from real-world use will inform future versions and the Lab's broader learning agenda.

Nonprofits are routinely encouraged to diversify funding, grow major gifts, pursue institutional funders, launch campaigns, adopt new CRMs, and improve donor engagement.

But strategy alone does not create results.

Organizations also need the capacity to prioritize opportunities, assign ownership, manage relationships, use data effectively, make decisions, coordinate activity, and follow through consistently.

When that infrastructure is weak, good fundraising strategies can stall. For resource-constrained organizations, the challenge can be particularly acute: the organizations with the least capacity to build fundraising infrastructure may also be those that need sustainable revenue growth the most.

The Fundraising Lab is exploring what practical, accessible infrastructure nonprofits actually need and how organizations, funders, and capacity-building partners can strengthen it.

The Fundraising Lab is still in an exploratory phase. We're interested in learning from:

• Nonprofit leaders and fundraising practitioners
• Funders and community foundations
• Capacity-building organizations
• Researchers and academic partners
• Consultants and technology providers

If you're working on similar questions, experiencing these challenges in your organization, or interested in testing emerging tools and assessments, we'd welcome your perspective.